Monday, April 11, 2016

Vatican

Bishop defends inviting pro-abortion Sanders to Vatican conference

A Vatican official is defending
the decision to invite pro-abortion Democratic presidential candidate
Bernie Sanders to speak at an upcoming conference on economic and
environmental issues, as Pope Francis has reiterated the Catholic Church’s opposition to abortion.

“No alleged right to one’s own body can justify a decision to
terminate that life,” the pope writes in his latest apostolic
exhortation, “which is an end in itself and which can never be
considered the ‘property’ of another human being.” Francis also
expresses support for adoption and opposition to euthanasia and
population control.
However, critics have suggested
that inviting Sanders to speak at the April 15 conference, hosted by
the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences on April 15, is inappropriate
given the Vermont senator’s support for abortion at any stage of pregnancy at taxpayer expense.

Sanders called
it a “a source of real pride and excitement” that he has been given
such a prestigious platform from which to discuss his views “on how we
can create a world economy that is moral,” though he noted that “there
are areas where we disagree on women’s rights.”

Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, chancellor of the Pontifical Academy,
has confirmed that he is the one who extended the invitation,
explaining that “because we have two presidents coming from Latin
America, I thought it would be good to have an authoritative voice from
North America.” He maintained that the invite “does not signify any
support of the campaign.”